Comprehending Great Power Relations Today: The Hegelian- Rankean Legacy John Moses Abstract The current great power stand-off between China and the USA that has resulted from Chinese expansionist aims in the South China Sea and the threat to absorb Taiwan has little to do with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but rather more to do with the perceived need to expand Chinese power and economic-cultural influence throughout the world. There is a long archaeology of ideas of imperial expansion going back to GWF Hegel, Leopold von Ranke and their German followers. This paper illustrates the continuity of Hegelian-Rankean ideas during the 19th and 20th centuries down to the present as a contribution to understanding current Chinese aggression.. The Author John Moses completed post-graduate study for five years in West Germany during the Cold War. His Professors both in Munich and Erlangen were at pains to account for the threat of Soviet expansionism and how to contain it. In doing so they drew on the historical-philosophical legacy of Hegel and von Ranke. The following paper reflects this training. John Moses has taught European history at the University of Queensland until retirement and published widely on Labour history, German colonialism, German historiographical traditions and the church struggle both against National Socialism and Real Existing Socialism in Communist ruled East Germany as well as on the ANZAC movement. Article A valuable thing I learned from my post-graduate studies in Germany, 1961-1965, was never to overlook the historical roots of present day international conflicts. – The origin of that recommendation goes back to 1833 when a rising German scholar named Leopold Ranke (1795- 1886) published in Berlin a 50 page paper in the then brand new journal (which he edited) named Die Historisch-Politische Zeitschrift . The article was entitled Die grossen Mächte, (The Great Powers).1 What Ranke had to say then, it will be argued, has outlived anything that his 1 English translation in, The Theory and Practice of History by Leopold von Ranke, edited and introduced by Georg G. Iggers & Konrad von Moltke (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co inc, 1973) pp.65-101. 2 contemporary Karl Marx (1818-1883) had to say about the root cause of human conflicts. For Marx all political conflict was attributable to the on-going class struggle; for von Ranke it was rather the Great Power rivalry for hegemony. This had begun to fascinate Ranke already as a boy in 1806 when Napoleon’s army marched through his home town of Wiehe from where he could actually hear the guns of the battle of Auerstadt on 14th October that year when the French overwhelmed the Prussian army. So early in his long life Ranke had witnessed “world history” unfolding on his doorstep. As an analysis of the rivalries between states, The Great Powers has never been surpassed. In fact in 1900 a pair of Ranke’s former students, Professors Max Lenz and Erich Marks in Berlin published an up-dated version of The Great Powers in which they applied Ranke’s insights to the rivalry of imperial powers of their time.2 Furthermore, these ideas were given an extraordinary boost in Germany in 1913 by the young Kurt Riezler with his highly influential book, Grundzüge der Weltpolitik in der Gegenwart (“Basic trends in world politics of the present”,3 that has never been translated). A contemporary example of the on-going relevance of Von Ranke’s ideas is documented in a study by the late Professor Waldemar Besson (1929-1971) on the foreign policy of Konrad Adenauer’s‘ Federal Republic of West Germany located as it was between the two great power blocs of the Soviet Union in the East (Warsaw Pact states) and the NATO states led by the USA. At that time Professor Besson memorably said that West Germany had to dance at three weddings simultaneously: One in Moscow, one in Washington and one in Brussels (Common Market). Under-pinning Besson’s analysis was the original thought of von Ranke about the behaviour of Great Powers. Leopold von Ranke was raised to the nobility by King Wilhelm I of Prussia in 1865 in recognition of his prodigious output on the history of Europe since the Reformation. These extensive works qualified von Ranke to be acknowledged as the veritable founder of the discipline of Modern History.4 Why? The answer is because von Ranke saw that the existence of States was the result 2 Hans-Heinz Krill, Die Ranke Renaissance: Max Lenz & Erich Marcks (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962). 3 J. J. Ruedorffer (pseudonym for Kurt Riezler), Grundzüge der Weltpolitik in der Gegenwart (Stuttgart & Berlin, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1915). 4 J.E.E.D Acton, “German Schools of History” English Historical Review , Vol 1, (1886): 7-42. 3 of the presence on Earth of a variety of national tribes who he designated as “ideas of God,” all striving to establish their identity and ultimately hegemony in a permanent rivalry with each other. One must not forget that von Ranke was a devout Lutheran who acknowledged the sovereignty of almighty God over His Creation. This insight was not, however, entirely original; Ranke had inherited key concepts from predecessors, especially Johan Gottlieb von Herder (1744-1803) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) which we will rehearse briefly here before highlighting von Ranke’s input and then those of his epigones, the Neo-Rankeans and Kurt Riezler (1882-1955). The paper will conclude with a comment on the Great Power rivalries currently dominating world politics. In the 18th century there was no united Germany but a condition known by historians as Kleinstaaterei, that is “petty state particularism”. “Germany” then consisted of a multiplicity of mostly tiny principalities, dukedoms and city states, the largest being Austria and Prussia who vied with one another for predominance in central Europe, as situation known as the “German Dualism.”5 There was no national political German identity, but the German pastor and scholar, Johann Gottfried von Herder from his parish in Riga (1764-69) had begun to make some influential observations about the nature of racial identity. In that Baltic city Herder had noticed how the local inhabitants consisting of both Teutons and Slavs strove to preserve their national identity in relation to one another. Each guarded their tribal language, religion, literature, legal system and customs, in short, their unique culture as sacrosanct. That is, each racial group spontaneously resisted being absorbed by the other. Indeed each manifested a unique national spirit which Herder called the Volksgeist. Bearing in mind that Herder was a Lutheran pastor it is not surprising that he incorporated this insight into his theology. In brief, almighty God had intentionally peopled His creation with different tribes which emerged all over the world (Creation) taking on characteristics that resulted from the different nature of the environment across the globe. For a ready example, a people who inhabited an island such as the English developed predominantly into seafarers while a land locked people became more dependent upon the continental nature of the climate and geography. People there developed into herdsmen and 5 Kleinstaaterei more particularly characterises the nature of “Germany” in the era when “Germany” was more of geographical description of the multiplicity of petty princedoms and dukedoms which comprised the then map of central Europe. As Goethe reportedly had observed there was a German language and culture, but there was no German country that he knew of. 4 farmers, and so on. Environment, then, affected everything: folklore, poetry, music, political system, the law and especially religion. In short, the Kultur or culture which every national group produced, combined everything that identified a nation as a unique entity. Herder, being primarily a theologian and literary scholar had not thought through the political implications of competing national identities. His notion of nationalism was entirely cultural as opposed to political. It took G.W.F. Hegel to spell out the political implications of the Volksgeist. His insight was that if a Volk wished to survive in a world of competing nations, then it had to develop the military capability to do so. Indeed, a Volk had to have the spirit of survival, otherwise it would be overwhelmed by more dynamic neighbours. And here is Hegel’s Machiavellian perception: It is in the nature of States to expand at the expense of weaker neighbours. In short, power vacuums will be filled by those powers who can. This was painstakingly spelled out by an eminent German historian of ideas, namely Friedrich Meinecke (1862-1954) in his work, Die Idee der Statasräson in der neueren Geschichte in 1924, translated as Machiavellism: the doctrine of raison d’état in modern history (Yale University Press, 1957). In this benchmark work, Meinecke had elucidated very clearly what Hegel’s philosophy of history implied, namely what Niccolo Machiavelli had described as the behaviour of states in the 16th century in his treatise, The Prince (1532). The crucial insight here was that although all the rival princes in Europe were putatively Catholic Christians and presumably obliged to follow the precepts of Holy Church, the reality was that they engaged in all manner of violence, intrigue, mayhem and, of course, warfare whenever they perceived their interests threatened or wished to expand their territory at the expense of a weaker neighbour. So here was an apparently unresolvable paradox. How could sworn disciples of the Prince of Peace, all of whom believed in the divine right of kings, engage in such inhumane behaviour? The answer was, they did so because of reason of state, raison d’ état. In short, Princes (Statesmen) had no choice but to act this way in order to protect their realms.